Part 1, lesson 16. Continuation of the same subject ; that our flesh is nothing but sin

Q. Could you add something to what you have already said, to make me understand better how the flesh is nothing but sin ?

A. It is so much sin, that it is all inclination and movement to sin, and even to all sin; so that, if the Holy Spirit did not restrain our soul, and assist us with his grace, it would be carried away by the inclinations of the flesh, which tend wholly to sin, and are diffused and spread in the soul, on account of its strict connexion and in timate union with the flesh.

Q. Great God! what then is the flesh ?

A. It is the effect of sin, the principle of sin; we may say of it, as the Jews said of the man born blind, that it is wholly born in sin.*

Q. If that is so, why do we not fall at every moment into sin?

A. It is the mercy of God that prevents us from it, and his divine Spirit that assists us

• In peccatis natus es totus. Joan, ix, 34.

and remains in us to sustain our weakness.

Q. I am then indebted to God, if I do not commit every sin in the world ?

A. Yes: St. Augustine said so of himself, and it is the ordi nary sentiment of the saints; because the flesh is drawn by such a weight towards sin, that nothing but God can prevent it from falling into it.*

Q. What' could not wisdom and philosophy ?

• Gratias tuae deputo et quaecumque non feci mala. Quid enim non facere potui, qui etiam gratuitum faciims amavi? Et omnia mini dimissa esse fateor, et quae mea sponte feci mala, et quae te duce non feci. S. Aug. Conf. 1. ii, c. 7.

A. No; for the greatest philo sophers and wisest men of an tiquity, although they knew virtue and had the greatest horror for vice, committed the grossest faults, and even fell into the most horrid and shame ful vices against nature.*

Q. We are then under very great obligation to our Lord Jesus Christ, for having given us his Holy Spirit, to raise up again our soul, and draw it out of the mire of sin and the cor ruption of the flesh in which it \vas plunged r

A. Our obligation to him is too great to be expressed. * Rom. i. 21, etc.

Q. But, again, could you tell me something more about it ?

A. What I can tell you about it is, that there is no sort of sin that can be conceived, no sort of imperfection or disorder, no error or irregularity, that does not fill our flesh; so that there is no kind of weakness, or folly, or. crime, that the flesh is not capable of, at every mo ment.

Q. What! I might be a fool; I might act as such, through the streets and highways, if I were not assisted by God ?

A. This would be but little, as it only regards civil deport ment; but you must know that, without the grace of God and the virtue of his Holy Spirit, there is no kind of impurity, foulness, infamy, drunkenness. blasphemy; no sort of sin, to which man may not abandon himself.

Q. The flesh is then very corrupt?

A You see it.